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Are there any good centrist or right-wing think tanks in the U.S. that are respectable, principled, and might have interest in hiring a mathematical modeler that I could apply for jobs at?
For context, I have a PhD in math, I specialize in game theory and mathematical modeling. I also have some experience with disease modeling, though not Covid specifically. I am currently nearing the end of a postdoc research position at a University, and a few published papers and several drafts I'm still working on. Over time I've felt less comfortable in academia as everything shifts less and all diversity stuff keeps getting worse. It hasn't affected me directly much (though you can never tell when you don't hear back from a job application whether being a straight white male was the cause or not), but it's kind of uncomfortable, and some topics that I'm interested in I'm afraid to actually go into because the papers might be rendered unpublishable. And just in general I feel the papers I publish don't actually matter all that much, and I suspect something more applied like this might feel more meaningful.
I'm still applying for some jobs at universities, but also industry jobs and am wondering if maybe a right wing think tank would be a good opportunity. Given the left's capture of the Universities, this maybe implies there's a shortage of right-wing academics and I'd have a better shot of getting in? But that's probably less true in math. And I definitely don't want to work for some propaganda machine that just hacks studies together to conclude whatever they already believe is true. I think that the left sometimes has legitimate points that are worth considering, and ideally would like to be able to make good scientific papers and mathematical models that give insight to people on both the left and right, and can potentially make the right stronger and smarter.
Bonus points for places that allow working remotely or are near the East Coast so I don't have to move very far, but at this point I'll take what I can get.
Basically all of them are Center-Center-Right except for social issues, where the Center prevails.
If you got lots of juice, go for the golden ring: Try for Rand, Hoover, CfR, Cato, or American Enterprise.
That said, there is no such thing as a principled think tank in general, and ESPECIALLY on the right. American Enterprise is the most straight down the middle Con think tank, with the knowledge they want you to own nothing and like it; eat bugs in a pod; grind orphans into paste to grease axial shafts and such.
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